[GLLUG] Collaboration

[Thomas Hruska]

Nathan Hartley wrote:
>> However, the idea of a community-based outreach like Nathan had mentioned
> and 
>> Jason's suggestion of assisting not-for-profit organizations with getting
> linux set 
>> up are great ideas in my opinion.
>  
> Most of the non-profits and churches I know, have had at least one late
> model Windows machine burdened with the following:
>  . Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Power Point, Access, Outlook)
>  . Adobe Photoshop
>  . Adobe Page Maker
>  . Intuit QuickBooks
>  . Whatever photo organizing application that came with their digital
> cameras
>  . Occasionally Corel Draw
>  . A few have been lucky enough to have had someone setup a crude file
> sharing network for them.
>  
> What non-profit has an extra $2000+ for software after buying the $500
> computer? 
>  
> A friend of mine was just telling me that his church was unknowingly running
> boot-leg software. When they found out, at first they wanted to come clean,
> but were later tempted to let it slide after learning of the cost to do the
> right thing.
>  
> I don't have to tell this group how on easy this same setup could be done
> for "free". 
>  
> Sure this could be done with other distros, but speaking only from my
> experience, Ubuntu would provide the perfect base. Just add Scribus
> (PhotoShop), GNUCash (QuickBooks), F-Spot (photo organizer) and for good
> measure SAMBA (Windows Networking). And you would have the perfect
> non-profit/ small business computing machine.
>  
>  
> Sorry, Dan's query got me a little excited, I'll quietly go back to my
> corner now...
>  
> Nathan Hartley
> http://iLothlorien.com

If I may point out the previous discussion thread about "Ubuntu on 
damaged hardware", the thread eventually went into "what OS runs well on 
older hardware" and herein lies the rub:  Ubunutu is really nice but 
requires computer hardware most non-profits simply don't have and some 
simply can't afford (either a tight budget or no budget).  DSL seems to 
be the only OS I've found that actually boots and runs at a pretty good 
clip on older hardware but the UI is incredibly "foreign".  The people 
at non-profits have been trained to turn their computers on and off - 
Ubuntu and kin just take too long to boot up and Ubuntu's UI is too 
heavy for older hardware.  Xubuntu's UI is much lighter-weight (XFCE) 
and snappier but still has the heavy boot overhead and XFCE is not 
exactly a "familiar" interface.

I like Ubuntu's UI best - it has a great system-wide update interface 
and is, more or less, usable (I have a few gripes).  The look-and-feel 
is similar to Windows but its just clean.  The only major issue is 
performance on older hardware.

So, if there were a distro. with the boot performance of DSL, Ubuntu's 
ease-of-use, update management system, and hardware recognition for the 
kitchen sink, and a window manager with a look-and-feel of Ubuntu's 
modified GNOME with the performance of XFCE and a few tweaks so I could 
have my taskbar be on the left-hand side of the screen and have it act 
(more or less) like the Windows taskbar, that would be the perfect base. 
  You'd be surprised where some people want their taskbar.  And how they 
want it to act.

(BTW, I think you meant Scribus [Page Maker]).

-- 
Thomas Hruska
CubicleSoft President
Ph: 517-803-4197

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